This week over 2.01 billion Muslims worldwide and some 2 million co-religionists in South Africa are celebrating Eid-ul-Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice) which signals the end of the Hajj (the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi Arabia).
More importantly, it symbolises the willingness of the Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, when God ordered him to do so in a dream as an act of obedience. As a reward to his resolute faith, God instead sent a lamb to be sacrificed.
No doubt the traditional message of Eid Mubarak (Blessed Festival) will echo all over, including from President Cyril Ramaphosa and other dignitaries.
While race understandably still dominates the South African psyche, it is religion, especially the adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – warts and all, that has featured prominently both in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid, and in their justification and therefore proliferation.
Who can forget the racist intellectualisation of the then Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk or NGK), and its neo-facist Calvinist extreme which underpinned the breakaway Herstigte Nasionale Party, led by the arch verkramptes, Albert Hertzog and Jaap Marais, who eagerly espoused the moral justification of apartheid and the utterly discredited “divine right” of the Whites to rule South Africa.
In contrast, the founders of the ANC in general were well rooted in God-fearing social Christian conservatism, largely perpetuated by the missionary school ethos.
A quirk of history saw the brutal Dutch colonialists exile a “troublesome” anti-colonialist Muslim activist, Prince Yusuf of Batavia, part of the Malay Archipelago, to the Cape of Good Hope in 1693 complete with an extensive entourage and thousands of Malay slaves.
This is not to marginalise the contribution to the struggle by other faith traditions including the African traditional religions, Hinduism and those of no faith, including communists and atheists.
Promoting racial, religious and societal diversity and freedom is a mainstay of the South African Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is also part of the ANC government’s social cohesion and nation-building strategy for the new South Africa.
This is one area that the governing ANC in general seems to be getting it right. When it comes to faith traditions, ANC leaders bend over backwards to accommodate their events, ceremonies and entities.
In June 2023, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, an ex-secretary-general of the SACP in Gauteng and that of the United Democratic Front (UDF), attended the 30th Annual International Pentecost Holiness Church graduations and thanksgiving ceremony in Zuurbekom in Gauteng.
“Churches remain an important pillar in our societies, and are paramount in our efforts to promote peace, unity and stability in the country. As part of Youth Month, it is important that we pray for an end of all forms of socials ills facing especially young people,” emphasised Mashatile.
This is also translated in policy decisions. In April 2023, Ramaphosa signed into law the Employment Equity Amendment Bill of 2020, which is aimed at promoting racial diversity, social cohesion and equality in the workplace through setting targets for economic sectors and geographical regions and requiring employers to develop employment equity transformation plans.
The fact that the Jewish Passover (Pesach), the Christian festival of Easter marking the Resurrection of Christ, and the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadaan, converged at the same time last March, presented politicians with the opportunity to stress again the unity of purpose for all South Africans in the country’s future, and a reminder of the sacrifices Jews, Christians and Muslims made in the fight against apartheid.
“It is good for the soul of our nation,” observed Ramaphosa in his message to the three faith traditions, “that so many communities are engaging in prayerful devotion and family-centred activities at this time.
May this (occasion) bring us together as families and as a nation to ease some of the challenges that have affected communities and families in recent weeks, including incidents of violent crime and carnage on our roads.”
This year’s celebrations and observations have not been as seamless as expected especially for the Muslim community, thanks to the spillovers of events in the Holy Land – at the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Islam’s third holiest site. The City of Peace is revered by all three Abrahamic faiths.
The sight of Israeli soldiers violating the sanctity of a place of worship – the Al Aqsa Mosque – and attacking worshippers during Ramadaan simply reinforced the ANC’s unwavering support for the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom.
The ultra-right wing Israeli government of Bibi Netanyahu is already at odds with Pretoria over the ANC’s equating the Jewish state to an apartheid state, in which Palestinian rights are either marginalised or non-existent.
At an inter-faith Iftar (the breaking of the fast) which this year coincided with Freedom Month, at the Masjidul-Quds Mosque in Gatesville in Cape Town, Mashatile observed: “Ramadaan, brings the spirit of sharing and Ubuntu – the idea that I am because you are. We must keep this spirit alive throughout because this is who we are as a people.”
The contemporary interfaith movement was established in the form of the UDF in August 1983 to defeat apartheid. “This was a continuum in a long tradition of heroic struggles by previous generations of liberators such as Abdul Burns, Reverend Dr Alan Boesak and Imam Hassan Solomon who led protest marches armed with the Bible and the Qur’an in hand,” he said.
South Africa, despite the governing ANC’s perceived liberal policies on several social issues, remains an essentially socially conservative society.
Christian social conservatism and the missionary school guided the ANC elders as much as their desire for freedom and gaining their inalienable rights.
The movement after all was born out of the clarion call by god-fearing social conservatives, including the Reverends Walter Rubusana and John Langalibalele Dube, “to bring all Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms”.
Reverend Dube in fact was an important member of the visionary quartet comprising Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Josiah Tshangana Gumede, Sol Plaatje and himself, who on that fateful day, January 18, 1912, gathered a motley crew of tribal chiefs, people’s representatives, church organisations, and other prominent individuals in Bloemfontein and formed the African Native National Congress, the precursor to the modern ANC.
Madiba had an unshakeable moral authority. Embracing minority faiths and cultures is a mainstay of the Constitution. Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have fought alongside their compatriots with distinction in pursuit of democracy and freedom.
South Africa is a notable example where the likes of Harold Wolpe, Denis Goldberg, Helen Joseph, Albie Sachs, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Nadine Gordimer, Helen Suzman et al, fought alongside their Christian, Muslim and Hindu compatriots, including the likes of Madiba, Steve Biko and a roll call of ANC stalwarts: Imam Abdullah Haron, Braam Fischer, Sedick Isaacs, Ahmed Timol, Dullah Omar, Ahmed Kathrada, Fatima Meer – the list is endless, in the struggle against apartheid.
It would be naive to think that everything is fine between the various faith groups in the rainbow nation. Muslims are grateful for the ANC government declaring 19 sites in the historical Bo-Kaap quarter to be National Heritage Sites following protests against “gentrification” of the enclave by rich property developers from Europe.
More recently, they have been exasperated by the spate of kidnappings seemingly targeting wealthy Muslim businessmen and their family members, including children, and the ineffectiveness of the police to catch the perpetrators.
Since the onset of democracy in 1994, many South African Muslims and coloured people, for that matter, especially the working class, feel they have been left behind in terms of education, jobs and housing, which they say heavily favours the Black majority at their expense.
Several Muslim activists perished in detention in the apartheid prisons alongside ANC stalwarts. In the case of activist cleric Imam Abdullah Haron, it has taken 54 years for his family to get his inquest re-opened after the apartheid regime inquest in 1969 declared that no one was to blame for his death in custody.
In the spirit of unity and dialogue, Mashatile assured his Muslim hosts: “I have tasked my office to engage formally with you in a solution-oriented dialogue about these and other issues.
We are the first to admit that while we have made strides to change the country for the better, we have also made mistakes.
We, therefore, look forward to hearing the specific concerns of the people about the government because we are genuinely committed to solving the problems of the people.”
Parker is a writer based in London
Cape Times